Letter: A choice without a choice

I attended the Bergamot Station Arts Center meeting on May 6 and I have the following comments:

1. The existing Bergamot Station Arts Center is extremely fragile. It can only exist if it has on-site parking, easy access and lower rent rates. Without these three legs it will collapse.

2. The proposed hotel and commercial office space would eliminate at least one if not two of these legs. Therefore the proposed hotel and commercial office space with the traffic and congestion it would cause cannot co-exist with the existing Bergamot Station Arts Center. Also it’s planned that the proposed hotel and commercial office space would subsidize the existing arts center and a bigger Santa Monica Museum of Art building. But having the proposed hotel and commercial office space would kill the existing center. We can’t have both. We can have either the existing Bergamot Station Arts Center or the proposed hotel and commercial office space but not both. We have to decide which of the two is more important to us.

3. For me, as a resident of Santa Monica, the choice is simple. But we residents really haven’t been given a choice. At this May 6 meeting, the City Planning Department wanted us to choose which of the three contractors we preferred. This is like asking a condemned man which he prefers — being shot, hung or electrocuted.

4. I stated the above comments on the forms provided by the City Planning Department at the meeting but we know this is an exercise in futility. The Planning Department goes through the motions, checks the boxes and then ignores the wishes of residents as happened with the Hines Project across the street. The whole City Planning Department public review process is a façade and sham. They have no intention of doing what the residents want, only what the pro-developer City Council majority wants them to do. The decision has already been made regarding the existing Bergamot Station Arts Center. If you want to see what the end result will be go look at the Quonset Hut at Broadway and Ninth Street. That will be your new Bergamot Station Arts Center with all the traffic and congestion that the proposed hotel and commercial office space will create in an area already suffering from traffic congestion and gridlock.

I agree. The meeting was a complete sham – only one team made sort of an effort and that was KOR, but it was a plan that just wiped out Bergamont and put a hotel at the center of it. The person from City Council even announced that they had endorsed 26th St. which tipped their hand that the decision was already made and the 26th St. team had nothing to show for themselves. It was a joke and they are just checking off the boxes. Bergamont is and has always been a neighborhood jewel, a bit down at the heels, but still a jewel for those in the know. Now with the train literally pulling in opportunists with the pro-development City Council see the dollars signs and don’t care about the neighborhood, the existing tenants and their faithful clients — it will disappear. Shame on the City Council for treating us like idiots and shame on them for not listening to our concerns.

It felt like decisions have been made and the so called public meeting was all for show. The City Staff has already recommend one of the groups (26Street TOD Partners) and its the one with the most harmful impact on the artist and surrounding neighborhoods…. If anyone cares about the arts I would recommend attending the next meeting because if City Staff has it’s way….. Bergamot Station is going to become a cement city mall with a hotel and not enough parking to accommodate the needs of the location. Also, the artist and residents of Santa Monica will be the biggest losers. We will once again lose a vital part of our unique identity all for the sake of big money developers who may have some BIG connections at City Hall. There did not seem to be a good plan for transportation buses to enter or exit the area for coming train. Seems very short sighted not to plan vital infrastructure to move people in and out of this vital transportation zone. Especially since there are ZERO parking spaces for the train.

“They have no intention of doing what the residents want, only what the pro-developer City Council majority wants them to do.” I think that we finally have a chance to change that by at least getting rid of Pam O’Conner this year since I hear that SMRR has finally come to their senses about endorsing her. Perhaps they can check in with Bill Baur this time about the political ties and histories of candidates prior to selecting candidates to endorse.

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